Bliss
by Chyme for the Rhyme
Summary: Canaan will never stop leaving. And Maria will never stop trying to build a home - for both of them.
1. Chapter 1

Notes: According to the '428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de' game, which basically acts as a prequel to the events in 'Canaan', Maria has an identical twin sister. She only gets mentioned here in passing, but I felt it best to explain her existence nevertheless.

* * *

It doesn't happen automatically, of course. They don't fall into each other, all teeth and tongues and saliva and spit, the chairs and table groaning under their weight as they try to find ways to balance each others' hands against another's face. They don't even fall into bed together. But for a moment, free from gunfire, free from the chaos that seems to surround them, a mote of dust floats by, caught by the sunlight as it forms a prism against Canaan's eye. It reminds Maria of another moment, one caught in her memory if not in her camera, one where Canaan lifted a marble up to her face and smiled. In those seconds she had been blind to the magnificent view the tower had offered. And now Maria gets why.

The photographer in her wants to marvel at the way the sunlight dapples over everything, the way it touches the planes of Canaan's face and alights on her hair in the same way she's seen it glint off snow. She wants to compare the dust mote to the marble, wants to imagine a whole world inside it. But against the rest of Canaan it looks too tiny, despite the charming way it wiggles through the air. It's almost as though it highlights the rest of her.

'Canaan,' she says, not even hearing how gentle, how warm her voice has become, the syrupy tone of it causing something to stir within Canaan's face. 'I want...'

She hesitates for a brief second before reaching out a hand, stretching her arm out in a half-aborted wave. She wants to slide her palm against Canaan's cheek, maybe let her fingers slide down to curl within that strong brown hand. Her touch has always been welcomed before but...

'I want to kiss you.'

Maria has always been both stupidly brave and brilliantly honest. And if she had had any idea how much she could possibly shine to Canaan, simply by speaking such a heartfelt desire, she would never have doubted herself. Even without the synesthesia, to Canaan, she is a wonder.

Then the gunfire comes again in a blitz, flares of juddering motion robbing them both of each other. Maria remains crouched behind the crumbling corner of a wall, some red, thrashed-looking thing as Canaan leaps over bricks and scrapped-up pieces of mortar, her body diving across the grey pieces of an incomplete road. They're in a lonely part of the world, and if not for the antagonistic men with guns, it would be a nice spot, Maria thinks, one that would look artistic to the lens, and a sharp contrast to the heavily populated areas she likes to frequent and note down within the blur of film.

The gunfire stops. But Canaan doesn't come back.

* * *

Maria runs. She escapes through a crowded airport after crawling into the bumpy space between a famer's limes and the roaring engine of his blue van, one that purrs under the scrape of her fingernails. She nestles closely to the squeezing buoyancy of the fruit, feeling its rubbery softness against her side as it transports her back into civilisation. But she doesn't know what to do. There was no body, meaning that Canaan's alive (she hopes, she prays), but it also means she's left her. Again. And she never disappears, not completely, not until Maria's safe. That's just how she works. Unless...

Maria halts beside a rack of pink, flowery clothing, the rippled edges of the sleeves reminding her of the culottes she worn once when she had been the target of Hebi, back when she realised that Canaan was capable of leaving her without a goodbye. Canaan has done the same thing here except that maybe, this time, it has been prompted by something other than a belief that staying away somehow makes it harder for Maria's life to be ripped away.

Maria's hand rises up, above her chest and her fingers clutch against her shirt, forming a battered fist over her heart. It already feels as though a part of her has been torn away. She ignores the smothered chuckles from a group of guys to her left and the way their eyes linger on her hand as it stiffens against her boob. Only a stranger will think of it a caress rather than a grimace of physical expression, one formed as her body resists the urge to curl in on itself.

It is then, through tear-struck eyes, that Maria navigates her way on board an airplane, muttering out sullen apologies as her feet graze a little too heavily against the carpeted corridor of space between seats. She bangs against arm rests and spends the flight feeling pity rather than trying to stir up the positivity she has tried so hard throughout her life to believe in. She can't bear to reach out right now, not when it seems that the one person she tried to reach out the most to has so cruelly rejected her.

It is only later, two weeks later, that she receives the first postcard.

* * *

They come thick and fast after that, snapshots of beautiful beaches and sweeping cities of glinting steel. Most have people in them, bored washed-out shades of flesh in swimsuits or Hawaiian shorts, their faces blurred out by both motion and distance. The choice surprises Maria. The taste does not seem like Canaan's. It's almost as though she's been scrolling through newspaper comics or looked at Victorian era museums to research the sort of postcards one should send before reaching a flawed – and yet to her, perfectly logical – conclusion.

Maria would prefer a photograph of Canaan, her shoulders exposed to the sun as they help her hold her posture firm and unrelenting against the rest of the world. She could scribble her words on the back, stick everything inside an envelope. Maria would not mind.

But no, Canaan sticks stubbornly to her postcards, writing out her blunt sentences in large, overly looped letters. It's like she's trying to make the words look as flowery as possible and Maria reminds herself that Canaan's first tongue is probably not Japanese, and that she's probably translating from one alphabet to another as best she can.

'Can you teach me to make a giraffe, next time we meet?' asks one and the certainty makes her heart warm. 'I saw another Japanese tourist here but she was nothing like you. Her colour was too red, like fire,' states another and something flickers into wild relief within Maria's elated chest.

She will never see what Canaan sees but it is enough to know that Canaan still sees her, still compares her lack of presence to what's around her. Maria has spent enough time misunderstanding passive aggressive arguments with her parents and weathering her way through quiet, stilted conversations with her sister to know that being missed is an achievement. Even if it's not a very nice one.

But the postcard she re-reads the most is one which shows a fountain surrounded by fresh, green grass, like park scenery without the usual benches. It's stone, water tipping within the curve of its bowl in a weary line of symmetry. It looks old, alien and alone, cracks spiralling over its sides like the jewellery box Maria has owned since she was six, old and half-broken from all the times she's accidently sent it skittering off the side of her dresser. It makes Maria frown when she looks at it because it makes her feel sad, like something in Canaan, something deep and personal rose out of her and made her pick up this postcard from out of all the more cheerful looking ones she could have taken instead.

It simply says one thing on the back.

'Maria, I wanted it longer than you did.'

Which isn't quite an answer. But it is not a rejection either. And it is, in a way, an ice-breaker. So Maria holds onto it and hopes.


	2. Chapter 2

Maria buys blue crocuses and arranges them hazardously on the table as a testament to the misery that churns throughout her gut. She picks at the petals until she cries, heart-broken at her own pettiness, one that causes her to rip the flowers limb from limb. The leaves catch her tears as she smothers her face inside them, her hands coming up to touch the shorn green stalks as if in apology. She sniffs. Her hands still hold the faint trace of pollen and she wipes it from her fingers as though the leaves are replacement tissues.

Six months. Six months and all she has to hold onto are postcards that Canaan doesn't seem to know how to write. One of them is torn up within the slim fold of a paper-mâché bin she had brought on sale from a nice old lady's store. The picture had been pale, the colour of a long meadow stretched out by the golden cornstalks waving in the wind. But the words on the back had simply said, 'I saw a dog and remembered that once somebody had said I was like that for you. I don't know whether I liked what they said or not.'

Maria had felt great tearing it up. But now she just looks at the stripes, at the way she had ripped them apart so thoroughly that the edges fluffed out like the opening of a stalk from some plant, no, more precisely, like cotton, that weird plant her father had showed her once. She can remember the round white balls of fluff, so like clouds that she could trace them into individual shapes, like cauliflower and candy and spurs of dust kicked up by her heels.

Maria stops. She isn't sure why her mind is conjuring up these images, wild, stray impulsive pictures that arrange themselves into a varied scope of colours; Maria in wellingtons holding her father's hand as he bends the plant down towards her, her sister tucked behind their mother's skirt, eyes glistening as she watches Maria touch the plant. She remembers it as soft, but ridged, falling apart against her fingers as though trying to invite her in.

Perhaps she has been a photographer too long, thinking too hard about the evocative nature of the pictures she tries to achieve and the way they branch into memory and help onlookers recall sensation. And that makes her feel worse because it leads her into thinking about Canaan and how she probably remembers things in a different way, the shapes of her long dead family tinged with colours and sounds Maria will never have a hope of touching, let only conveying through her work.

Or perhaps it's just that Maria hates herself a little, for feeling lonely even though her family's still alive while Canaan's are dead.

I lasted two years without Canaan before, she tells herself. And I lasted almost as long afterwards. What's six months compared to that?

She finds herself reaching across the table for the camera.

* * *

Of course, it is only a day after Maria finds herself crying into her impulsive purchase of flowers that she runs into Canaan. Or at least Canaan smashes herself into her, her lips clumsily landing on the corner of Maria's mouth as the other girl jerks back in surprise.

'Oh,' Canaan says, looking more disappointed than Maria thinks she has any right to. 'I missed.'

Maria stares at her incomprehensively, trying to ignore the warm slide of Canaan's arm against the side of her neck. It hangs there, palm-heavy against the knob of bone that marks the beginning slide into her spine, goosebumps rising up along her arm at the sensation.

Maria tries to ignore it.

'You missed?' she grits out. 'You know what I find 'amazing' Canaan? That fact that you 'missed' out the 'you', at the end of that sentence. That's what normal people say when they're reunited! I missed you! I missed you, I missed you, I miss-ed...'

Maria finds herself weakening under Canaan's warm hand, the way rest it rests proprietarily at the top of her spine, fingertips trailing suggestively through a few tangled clumps of her hair, though Canaan probably doesn't mean anything by it. Her voice breaks, the sob rising up out of her throat even though she tries to push it down, fist landing a little clumsily on Canaan's shoulder though the other girl doesn't flinch.

'I-I miss-se-'

'I missed you too, Maria. And you're right. I should have said it. I was trying too hard to follow tradition.'

'Trad-tradition?'

'Yes. People give each other kisses all the time as greetings, as lovers or old friends. I've seen it. And you wanted to do it last time so...'

Maria gives her a baleful stare.

'...was I wrong?'

Maria laughs.

'Not about what we both wanted. But you know, it's tacky to just plant one on somebody you've stood up for the last six months.'

Canaan has the grace to look a little embarrassed at that, though there's a hint of steel in her eyes. With a sinking heart Maria realises that means she's not sorry.

'I had to be sure more men wouldn't come. That you would be safe. I tracked down their headquarters and then...'

There's a grim silence. And then-

'I can't stay.'

You never even try to, Maria thinks, trying to squash that dry rind of bitterness that creeps up inside her.

'But...' and Canaan offers her a slight squeeze of the shoulders. 'I can always come back. Again and again, as work permits me.'

Canaan will never be able to leave the danger behind. And she will never allow it to follow her back to Maria. Maria herself thought she had realised this long ago. And now, as this knowledge sinks into her softly, Maria finds herself raising her chin, catching Canaan's eyes with her own. She hopes she looks determined, brave and strong the way she's always pictured the action-geared heroines she's seen in movies. The way she has always, always pictured Canaan.

'Give me a gun.'

Canaan's eyes draw down into a frown, a question coming to her lips, one, Maria just knows will be full of clouded panic despite the calm way it will be asked. So she cuts her off, ignoring the way Canaan's fingers dig into her shoulders, crushing down as though they were steel bars instead of flesh.

'Then teach me how to use it.'

Maria can't do this by herself. She doesn't know how to navigate the dark areas of a city let alone the black market, doesn't even know how to walk into a country where she could buy a gun without being labelled as a criminal. But unlike Canaan, she has learnt how to ask for help.

'Please,' she stresses, 'I need to learn. You saying 'I don't' isn't good enough. Not if we both want to be a part of each other's lives. And we both do, don't we? Even if you say we don't and you go away again, sooner or later, you'll come back. So I need to learn, in case you're not there when someone stupid or bad comes to hurt me.'

She has no idea if she resembles the heroines she is so fond of as she says this. But Canaan looks away all the same as though she's blinded her. Not for the first time does Maria wonder if her 'colour', the colour only Canaan can see, flares out around her as she speaks. Does it burn like fire, like the colour of a flower in the field, bright white against passive green? Or does it shimmer and soothe, like water, like blue? Canaan has only ever told her that it is calming, relaxing in a way no else's is.

Canaan squeezes her shoulder again. But at least it is not a 'no'.


	3. Chapter 3

Maria learns to sleep with a gun under her pillow. It forms a wedge between the comfortable gap of both pillow and mattress so that she wakes up to a dull throbbing in her head. But eventually she learns to sleep, rough and ready, like a child jittery with Christmas day nerves. Canaan stays by her side and strokes her hair as she falls into her dreams, perhaps to ease the transition; either way Maria has fewer nightmares about blood and fallen soldiers, watching the way their blood mixes in with the clothes of civilians.

Her dreams have always been strange; everyone's blood seems to be a different colour. It's as though her mind wants to rebel against the notion that everyone dies the same, that a dead body is just as worthless as the flowers that may or may not line its grave. If it even gets one, that is. Because even that is an achievement in Canaan's world.

Canaan herself does not teach her anything fancy. No somersaults, no head tucked-in-and-knees-bent moves. She simply teaches her to point and aim, to never run while firing. Maria is sure that this is not what Canaan was taught but she has no complaints; the gun is too rough and thin within her fingers, not like the firm, stable space of a camera and she knows she will never be able to pull the trigger with the same confidence that lets her click down on the shutter. Maria is no fighter, no killer. And she knows that Canaan wants it to stay this way.

'You're not meant for killing, the same way I am,' she tells Maria, firmness colouring her voice, 'your hands are for making pictures of the world we live in.'

Maria laughs. 'It sounds funny when you say it like that. You should just say 'taking pictures.'

'No.' Canaan shakes her head and corrects Maria's slightly trembly hold on the gun. 'You make pictures with your fingers every day, not just with the camera. You make amazing things comes to life with the cat's cradle, for example. And you point at things, describe what you see there as though it's a place we can visit. You take me there with your excitement.'

Maria fights down the urge to hug her.

'That's mean! You're trying to discourage me!'

'If only I could.' Cannan favours her with a mock-glare. 'But I understand why this is important. If it helps keep you here in the world, making pictures, then it is something I must learn to be content with.'

Content but not happy. Maria swallows and pulls the gun up a little higher, as though she's preparing to push the muzzle right towards the centre of the sun. Maybe one day, she'll even be able to aim that high.

* * *

Later, as the sun falls through the sky at a slant, Maria catches Canaan smiling. This is nothing new; Canaan frequently smiles at Maria, or at least around her. But this smile is a strange thing, a jumble of warm, sleepy and peaceful, the expression a child would make after a parent draws a soft sheet against their shoulders.

It makes Maria feel both happy and sad at the same time and for half a minute she just stands there stupidly, wondering if she should snatch a photo, before she does something to wipe that smile aw-.

Canaan's head swivels round, awareness tainting her eyes like a hawk's. Maria draws slim comfort from the fact that at least they haven't turned red.

'Maria. Is something wrong?'

Maria feels the urge to fidget, to scuff a boot into the dirt, anything that will draw attention away from the panic she feels at turning into the child in their relationship.

'No. It's nothing. But...you looked happy, Canaan. For just a moment, it was quiet and peaceful and you looked so amazingly happy that I'm sad it's gone. I wish I could have taken a photo to show you how amazing you were. You would have got it if you'd have just seen...'

Maria trails off. This isn't like her. She doesn't leave sentences unfinished and her thoughts, though sometimes rashly made, always tend to be complete.

'I just wanted you to see yourself,' she adds dumbly.

Canaan looks thoughtful and honestly, kind of touched.

'I wasn't doing anything special. Just enjoying the sunset and the way it felt on my skin.'

Maria perks up.

'You mean the warmth? Yeah, I've done that! It's so amazing, especially when you know how cold it's gonna get later on!'

'No,' Canaan breaks in gently, 'not just warmth. At least, not the way I think most people feel it.' She hesitates, before continuing: 'The heat is there, but it's also red and blue against me. It touches me, but it's softly sharp like a knife that's being trailed over my skin with no force behind it. A tease, with no kind of pain. And it's soft too, like the cover of an old book, it even smells like one and raisons, slightly burnt ones, it smells like that as well.'

Canaan doesn't look frightened as she says all this, the way perhaps another person could have been with what might be nonsense trailing from their lips. But then, why would she be? For Canaan this is normal, and her senses deserve the privilege of not being lied about, not when they've helped keep her and Maria safe. In Canaan's mind that probably makes them sacred.

Canaan, for her part, looks pensive, the lingering rays of sunlight falling into the white of her hair like water pouring into cracks, greedy but through.

'And the sound, hearing a sunset is like...' she hesitates again and Maria is filled with fear at the look on her face, imagining bullets raining down on tin-plated roofs, trying to drill holes through earth and dust and skin in a war where the whiz and whirl of ammunition sounds deceptive, like rainfall. Years ago, back before she saw Canaan first kill for her, Maria would have tried to imagine something pleasant instead, the smell of baked bread perhaps, or maybe even freshly cooked rice. It hurts her sometimes, to know that she can never go back to such pleasant daydreams.

'You don't have to say,' she says, trying to sound as careful as possible, 'really, it's amazing that you can feel so much from that sunset, more than most people will ever know. All I can do is catch a second of it with a camera and show other people and even then, I'll never be able to make them feel everything you've caught in that same moment.'

For it's both beautiful and sad, but Maria cannot taste a sunset or feel a laugh brush against her skin the same way Canaan does. Nor will she ever understand those sensations; Canaan is too simplistic in her explanations and does not have the patience to unfurl metaphors or arrange descriptions so that Maria can pick apart the beautiful from the absurd, not in the same way Canaan can see her pick out a photo from a batch of film and declare it good for artistic reasons.

But Canaan looks her and, in one of her sharp, insightful moments says: 'Chocolate wrappers. The rustle of them, the crinkle of silver light that you feel when you rub your thumb over the foil. And oranges, but softer, the scent still citrus-like. Everything about you glows, Maria.'

Maria shakes her head with a smile.

'Thank you for trying, Canaan.'

But Canaan's eyes narrow as if in a challenge. 'Your voice...it's wrapped up in bubbles. But soft. Not like a pillow. Like...' Her eyes drift away from Maria for a second as though the answer will fall in front of them. 'Like the way dandelion seeds fly when you blow. Or when the wind pushes them, like they've been waiting for a signal and that's the trigger. Almost like a gunshot.' She gives a self-deprecating smile. 'But better. There's no pain there. But it's so careful the way it's arranged, the seeds drifting in the sky like a dance. No, like a gift. It's like beauty, the way you seek it out in your photos. Powerful and stuck in my head. I hear you, and so I see you. Like that.'

Her eyes flash triumphant as Maria chokes something down and steps up beside her. She wants to hug Canaan, wants to wrap her up with her arms and never let go. But something inside her holds soft and steady and Maria finds her head lifting, her eyes trying to trace out the fading gold in the sky with her own senses. And she knows that she won't smell raisons or old books, or feel the light like a delicately-placed knife against her skin; but she will feel Canaan's warmth as she tactfully leans into her side. And perhaps, for now, that is enough.


	4. Chapter 4

Canaan is out on one of her world-travelling trips, the kind that takes her far from home. Maria doesn't mean to feel egotistical at this thought but she truly does believe that this little flat, this apartment that Canaan has helped fill with soft white animal dolls, red cushions and framed outtakes of Maria's less successful photos, is home to them both. Perhaps Canaan thinks of it as a waylay station, a place where Maria cooks her Japanese food and tries to stuff noodles and battered pork down her throat. Except Canaan likes to touch her, wrestle her into bed with a brutish grace that leaves Maria's arms trapped beneath the sheets and open to her tickling touch.

Maria is a romantic; she'll freely admit it. But she doesn't think Canaan could touch her, in a place like this and not call it something more than just a place to stay. When she feels particularly lonely, she finds her fingers reaching under her pillow to stroke the gun there. Canaan would have a heart attack if she knew, or perhaps just wear a particularly hardy facial expression. But Maria reserves the right to be maudlin in their own damn home if she wants to.

But one day, as she comes home, ready to dump a heavy bag of tomatoes and rice onto the wooden table in their kitchen, she finds an unexpected guest waiting. One of the chairs is angled out and away from the table, and the guest sits there quietly, one leg cockily thrust out over the other.

Maria's eyes widen, both at the gun, and at the single hand Alphard uses to hold it steady with. She recognises the gleam of it as identical to the one she fondles beneath her pillow.

'Nice piece,' says Alphard casually.

Maria scowls. And tries to choke back the fear creeping into her stomach. The bag slips slightly between her trembling fingers and she shifts it against her chest, feeling it ride up against her shirt and prickle against her bra.

Alphard chuckles. 'Relax. I won't shoot you for putting down your shopping.'

Maria knows many things. One: that Alphard has a twisted sense of honour. Two: that she thinks Maria herself is twisted, unfit for Canaan's company. And three: that she doesn't usually lie, at least not in the way other people do.

She forces herself not to shake too much as she totters over on sweat-slicked ankles and lets the bag drop with a loud thump that rocks the table. Unbidden, two of the tomatoes roll out and onto the floor, landing with a quiet squelch that makes Maria inwardly flinch. It's stupid, but she can't help picturing the kitchen towel she'll need to tear a piece off in order to wipe up the red, runny mess – and it keeps her from wondering if Alphard will let her live long enough to do so.

'What will you shoot me for?' she finds herself asking, desperately praying that her voice doesn't crack. Thankfully, it holds.

'Canaan's back on my trail again. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy our...encounters.'

Maria finds her hackles raising, feels something twist inside and drag through the lining of her stomach at the way word 'encounters' is pulled and teased through Alphard's mouth, almost like a caress.

'But she is tenacious. And she also has the tiresome habit of being able to mess up my work.' Her mouth twists, like something unpleasant is taunting her tongue. 'So I decided to re-check my sources. Find out if it was true that Canaan was paying frequent visits to her favourite little Japanese tourist.'

'It's not that often,' Maria bites out, 'I wouldn't call Canaan being here 'frequent.'

Something flashes in Alphard's eyes. 'Often enough for someone in our line of work,' she says and Maria recognises it as a reprimand. 'Though perhaps too often,' Alphard continues, more thoughtfully. 'She's getting sloppily, taking risks, visiting you as often as she does.'

Maria feels fear seize her.

'You're saying Canaan has to be unhappy?'

'Ho...' Alphard looks at her with a lazy grin. 'You've grown more confident. Insisting that Canaan will be unhappy away from you...that's something you couldn't have done the last time we met.'

'That was before we started having sex,' Maria says defiantly.

The expression on Alphard's face is priceless. And then she starts cackling. 'Hah! You really have grown bold. Once I would have shot you on the spot for that.'

'Am I going to be used as bait again?'

'Oh no. I think not. I don't want Canaan broken, after all. I've learnt that it's less fun that way.'

'Fun! You're talking about Canaan like she's some kind of _toy._ '

Maria's hands clench, nails digging against her knees. She wishes she had both the courage and the skill to rake them against Alphard's smug face.

'Don't be stupid. You'll die before you could even move.'

Maria stiffens. Her body language betrays her, even when she's thinking about an impossible future.

'Are you going to pretend you're married? Live in secret? I have no real problem with it, though I know people in _our_ world who'd think otherwise. Who'd hunt Canaan down a little more viciously because while it's fair that she kills men, it's not considered _just_ if she doesn't sleep with them. A trusted woman over a stranger's dick? Travesty.'

'Stop it,' Maria whispers, 'that's just horrible, that people even feel that way. Stop it.'

And then she's pulled off her feet, Alphard's hand wrapped tightly round a piece of her hair. Maria blinks hastily, tears stinging her vision. She's being reeled in like some sort of fish. This is...this is-

'Ow!'

-painful. More than just.

'You said I was deceitful,' she bites out, her hands gripping out to reach her hair, desperately trying to force some slack into it. She's not stupid; she couldn't bat Alphard's hands away from her, even if her muscles swelled up to include the moon. 'Back at the conference. You said that and I was ashamed because I thought it was true. But even if it was, you were guilty of the exact same thing. And I've changed. I'm being honest now. Can you say the same about yourself?'

The world turns sideways and Maria yelps as she lands, limbs splattering against the floor. The kitchen tiles feel grubby against her hands, speckled with the grainy dirt that the crushed underside of Alphard's boots have pushed into the floor. And Maria finds herself pressing a hand down, flattening this dirt with her palm and imagining her life-line soaking it all in, all these horrors Alphard has trodden underfoot half a world away and now smeared over the floor of her home. Their home.

She finds her voice. 'I'm home. This is my home, the home I made with Canaan. And I don't remember inviting you in.'

Her knee slides up, followed by the squelch of tomato as it leaves a red line against both the floor and her skin. She's just in time to feel the thunk of it hit muscle as Alphard's boot kicks her in the stomach.

She should have known. Alphard can be dignified, can be cool under pressure. But she can also lash out, fiercer than a tiger when words provoke her, finding her weak spot in ways actions never could.

So Maria rolls over onto her back, the air shattering out of her lungs in a pained 'oomph,' as her fingers grab onto something sticky. And she winces, refusing to close her eyes even as she feels tears prickle the corners; she promised herself, after all, to never turn away, never again. To step out into the world and see it for how it is. And she keeps that promise, even now, talks to neighbours between the segments of her life that involve walking over concrete. She even runs out to kick a football around the block with a couple of boys every Thursday evening.

Her foot hocks around the line of the kitchen table leg, the wobbly one, one she's tried to fix with a bundle of masking tape over the loose copper hinge at the top. Alphard can't see it; her gaze is focused over and above it. And it's wrong to think her complacent, but still, Maria doubts Alphard has ever even _tried_ to fix a table leg.

Maria kicks, sharp and focused, the way those Thursday boys have forced her to become with their well-meaning laughs and casual jeers. She kicks and the table falls, collapses to one side in a way the shop assistant had demonstrated it shouldn't do when she had brought it with Canaan. Alphard immediately flips up and away, her gun firing a bullet into the leg that dared to move.

But Maria isn't quite the same civilian as before. She knows the agony of being shot, is better equipped to deal with the pain than before, back when Alphard had made her sit in a train and wait to die with only an apology inside her head. For her fingers are already thrusting forwards, pushing out towards the other floor-bound tomato, to scoop it up and throw it into Alphard's face. Only to feel her stomach drop as the other woman's face turns, the tomato missing by lazy centimetres.

Except...except she's not quite done yet.

Use your surroundings, Canaan had taught her, even if they start to fail you. Buy time and use them against an enemy alien to your battleground.

Maria does just that. She pushes out with her unwounded leg, knocks her chair against the one rocking out from Alphard's movement, and forces them both to crash back against the spot where Alphard's feet are touching down. Alphard leaps up again, graceful as a cat, slanting her body up and over the fallen table, which tips fully over onto its side like a pointed iceberg.

A bullet thrusts down into Maria's tomato-throwing arm and she screams in an angry wail of pain.

You won't beat me, she thinks, you won't, you won't! Not this easily.

And she tries to swallow down the agony in her limbs with determination, with memories of Canaan's smile when she looks at her, remembering the way her lover looks at peace when she holds Maria's face in her hands instead of a gun.

Maria grabs the side of the shopping bag with her free hand, the one that can still move before Alphard has a chance to place a bullet in another of her limbs. She sends the rice bag out, throws it so savagely that it tears between her fingers and lets a fine rain of rice descend onto Alphard's arm like pale sand. The hand attached freezes, caught in an incomplete lunge as the nuzzle of the gun swallows rice hungrily and Alphard scowls at it, not even stopping to give it a decent shake before she drops it, reaching for the knife at her belt.

That's what saves her, the fact that Alphard only has her single arm to wound her with.

Because in that vital second, Maria has already yanked the kitchen cabinet open and dragged out the spare phone Canaan kept hidden beneath a duster. Why Alphard didn't throw it out, she doesn't know; she'd had time to find the gun concealed by her pillow, after all. Or perhaps she'd thought the shape to be a chocolate bar, one too thick to be a Swiss Army knife and too small to be a working gun. Perhaps Alphard only saw weapons as just that, weapons and therefore the only worthwhile threat. Her mistake.

Maria slams down the button for speed-dial.

'Would you like to talk to Canaan?' she manages to say. 'You were being honest, right? About not wanting to use me for bait?'

Alphard stares at her. Then hollowly starts to laugh.

Maria flinches.

'Liar. I can see you've called the police.'

Maria flinches. She'd forgot to hide the screen, to tilt it away from Alphard's knowing eyes.

'What was the plan? To get me to confess something? Or perhaps to catch my voice after I'd murdered you. A final revenge so Canaan would know for sure, or perhaps to help blacklist me in this country. Your father's rich; and that's persuasive to people in charge.'

She grins and leans over.

Maria struggles to keep her eyes open, to not slam them closed against death. But all Alphard does is offer her a solitary pat on the head.

'Well done. You pass.' Alphard steps over the rice, but misses a few grains, carving out a new crushed colour into the tiles. 'You exceeded my expectations. How...surprising. It doesn't happen often enough, you know, people surprising me. And I reward effort.'

Alphard leaves but Maria doesn't relax, even when the front door swings close. She has just enough energy to roll over and dial an ambulance.

* * *

Canaan blazes into the hospital two days later, fury in her eyes. She brings something into the atmosphere with her, something dark that reeks of war and carnage, of the moments before a bomb falls. People don't understand why, not fully, but they find themselves scattering before her, only the hardiest of doctors sticking around. They are the ones who've seen enough gristly bodies rendered into pieces by violence, the ones who've been hardened by the task of living. Canaan holds more in common with them than she'll ever know.

Maria sees this and smiles, her fingers reaching out to snag Canaan's wrist as the woman half-collapses on the bed, seizing Maria's face with her trembling hands.

'I'll hurt her for this, badly,' Canaan pronounces.

Maria's smile broadens. Canaan didn't say 'kill.' Something of the light still holds fast within her.

'Thank you,' she says, 'but we're safe for now. Alphard doesn't go back on her word. She rewards effort.'

'Yes, she does. But not always in the way we expect. Be careful, Maria. Last time Alphard 'rewarded' me she shot you and blew off her own arm.'

'She's allowed you to live. Several times now, back when she kept winning,' Maria points out. She finds the pulse point that lurks beneath Canaan's skin, the one that remains trapped above bone, before pressing lightly with a touch meant to soothe.

Canaan strokes her cheek in acceptance, leaning in for a kiss. It's sweet, soft and remarkably un-sticky.

'I can't always be here to protect you.'

'No, you can't. So you should be teaching me more amazing stuff!'

Canaan groans, her head slumping down carefully into Maria's chest.

Maria grins.

'Where's my camera?' she finds herself asking. 'We should take a photo. To celebrate, I dunno, life!'

Canaan frowns, thoughtful. 'You usually eat ice cream when that happens.' Then her face twists into something that isn't quite a grimace. 'And you always make me eat it with you.'

Maria nearly drops her hand away from Canaan's skin in shock.

'You don't like ice cream!'

'No,' Canaan reassures her, 'I do...I just...' she struggles with the sentiment. 'My brain always hurts in the first few mouthfuls.'

'Oh, oh! You get brain-freeze easily! Why...why don't I know this about you?'

Canaan shrugs, her hands drifting down to tug at the ends of Maria's hair. They're like little plumes of feathery light, the edges of them licked by sunlight from the window as they puff out into miniature tassels of gold against the lines of Canaan's fingers. It never fails to make Maria feel half-tamed somehow.

'I can shrug off such things easily enough.'

It's not really an answer and unspoken, to Maria's ears at least, is the idea that Canaan is too used to pain, so much so that she doesn't see the need to complain.

'Next time, Canaan,' says Maria lowly, 'if something bothers you, you should tell me.'

Canaan stares at her for a moment.

'I'll try.'

It's not quite a promise, but it's enough.

* * *

Later Maria will stare at the photo Canaan grudgingly let her take and wonder if she managed to capture all the colours correctly. The hospital sheets look too grey to her eyes, too dull and dreary for the select amount of light she can remember shining that day. And she will trace over the lines in Canaan's face, wondering how many more wrinkles she will manage to grow into before the jumping motion of everything beneath is eventually ironed out by a bullet. If Maria were younger such a thought would not cross her mind. But now...well, it does.

There's no solution. No magic fix.


End file.
